(Above: As Henry Lawson didn't, but might have, said: "And my members they all taunt me, As my words come back to haunt me".....
Ned K.
On 4
March 2015 most unions participated in rallies across the country as part of a
campaign against the Abbott government’s attacks on living standards of the
majority of people living in Australia on behalf of big business.
Speakers at
the rallies highlighted the attack on shift and weekend rates of pay by big
business and the government. Workers at the rallies applauded speakers who
called on all union members to stand together and defend shift and weekend
rates of pay.
The mood of
workers was one of optimism that the latest attacks would be defeated in a long
campaign. Big business and the Abbott government were on the defensive. Abbott
and his offsider Abetz had to come out and say that there were no plans to
reduce “penalty rates” by them. It was all up to the Fair Work Commission. They
could not at that stage see a weakness in the workers’ movement.
Fast forward
to Tuesday 24 March and the front page of the Murdoch owned Australian newspaper where it is
revealed that the SA Branch of the SDA, the shop assistants’ union, had done a
deal with Business SA to eliminate shift rates Monday to Friday in the evening
shifts, extend base week day rates to Saturday work and slash Sunday rates from
double time to time and one half. The ‘reward’ for shop assistants? A
measly 3% per annum pay increase and the ‘choice’ of not working weekends if
that suited them! In other words, if a shop assistant has been relying on
weekend pay levels to feed their families or pay off a HECS fee, they would
have the ‘choice’ of working for much less pay or not work at all!
The ‘leader’
of the SDA said that the new deal would only eventuate if workers agreed
to it through an enterprise agreement and that it would only apply to ‘small
business’. Why not big businesses like Coles and Woolworths? Because the
SDA has already agreed through enterprise agreements to cuts to shift and
weekend rates that it now champions for the rest of the retail sector.
The timing of
the announcement by the SDA about this despicable deal with Business SA could
not have come at a worse time for the workers’ movement as a whole.
It comes just
as momentum builds for a sustained campaign to preserve and defend the very
elements of workers’ pay that the SDA and Business SA now intend to destroy.
SDA Leaders – Agents Of Big Business Yet Again
The servility
of the SDA leaders to big business has a long history extending back at least
to the 1950s when the SDA aligned itself with the reactionary, anti-communist
National Civic Council and Democratic Labor Party, ideologically and politically
led by Bob Santamaria. Tony Abbott as a young Liberal Party activist was
mentored by Santamaria.
The SDA
colluded with retail employers in the 1990s when Saturday morning rates of pay
were reduced from time and one half to time and one quarter and employers were
given the green light to roster workers’ ordinary hours over six days of the
week Monday to Saturday. It has been downhill from there. The big retailers
‘reward’ the SDA by ensuring union membership remains high through the check
off system in employment packs and inductions. Activism on the job in retail is
not encouraged. Unionism in retail is very much a fee for service, the service
being a job on low pay with a few consumer discounts thrown in if you are a
member. When was the last time you heard of a strike in the retail industry
over a collective agreement controlled by the SDA leaders and a big retailer?
We will never
know if any subtle threats were made to the SDA leaders by big business if they
did not give ground on shift rates or weekend rates. Nor will we ever know what
promises – like encouragement of union membership – were promised.
What Collective Experience For Young Workers?
However the
real tragedy of this behaviour by the SDA leaders is deeper than the actual
reduction in pay and transfer of wealth from wages to capital.
Retail and
hospitality industries are for hundreds of thousands of young workers their
first introduction to the world of work under capitalism. In retail they see a
barrage of media attacks that they are paid too much and driving businesses to
ruin. Then they read in the SDA magazine how lucky they are that SDA
representatives have just negotiated away another part of their pay and
conditions. Is it any wonder that when these young workers move on to their preferred
industry for a job that they are reluctant to join a union?
What did they
experience about unionism while working in retail? Did they have the
opportunity to engage in collective action to win something and share the win
with co-workers?
Not likely.
This is the real tragedy of deals done with the retail industry by the SDA
leaders.
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